Ab Exercises: What worked for you?

[PoonRaider]

At almost 17, you could say I have a pretty nice 6 pack for my age, and although it's not totally symetrical for reasons unbeknownst to me, I'm still proud of my abs!

So I have decided to let you guys know the methods I have been using for the past 2 years. However, it takes more than just working out to get a great looking pack, you have to be eating right too! For men, in order for your abs to show, you must maintain 10% or less body fat. For women, I believe it is somewhere around 12-14%. My abs really didn't start to look great until I took the initiative to change my lifestyle, by quitting my junk food and soda habits. I am now on a very low sugar, low fat, high protein diet. With all that said, here are the methods I used to achieve my 6 pack:

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/aa020402a.htm
1.) The Bicycle Manuever
This is my favorite ab workout, because put simply, it is the one that works the best. 5-10 minutes a day (Not counting rest period), in conjunction with at least one other abdominal exercise is enough exercise to attain a notable change in your abs within anywhere from 2 weeks to a month. This ab exercise has been ranked #1 for exercising the abdominals, and #2 for exercising the obliques. I do this exercise everyday.

2.) Captains Chair
This is the absolute best workout for targeting the obliques, however it is also effective in shaping the abs.

3.) 60 degree incline bench
I bought a nautilus about 2 years ago or so. It is a bench which is equipped with these padded pegs for your legs so that you can go up into a 60 degree incline to do situps. This is a great technique to finish your exercises up with.

With that said, does anybody know of any great ab exercises to add to the list?

 

[from zero]

shaping the abs.

Poor choice of words. You cannot "shape" any muscle.

 

[Synpax]

Crunches. Either in high volume or needsize style with the plate on your chest.

That is all.

For obliques, standing weighted side bends. Also good for forarms.

 

[lavi]

Unfortunely your unsymmetrical abs are genetic so not much you can do to fix that...

right now I do kneeling cable crunches, those seem to be great although strangely enough it's deadlifts that make my abs sore.

 

[Omegasox]

Needsize's routine is all I do, and only once a week.

 

[PoonRaider]

Has anyone tried the '6 Second Abs' machine, or the 'Ab Scissors'?

By the way, Crunches are worth dick (no offense). If I were you I'd replace your crunches with the bicycle manuever. It's so much more effective! Crunches are a BS exercise.

 

[PoonRaider]

Poor choice of words. You cannot "shape" any muscle.

Uhh, actually you can. You can tone and make the muscle more defined, or you can do hypertrophy exercises and make the muscle larger. Both of these things can be considered to 'shape' the muscle. Obviously a muscle already has a predetermined shape, however by working out the muscle through either endurance or hypertrophy exercise, you are giving the muscle a well defined shape.

 

[needsize]

there is no such thing a "toning" a muscle, you can make it bigger but thats it. The muscles on someone with 25% bodyfat are exactly the same as they would be if they had 5% bodyfat, they just look more toned because there is less bodyfat covering them. Look at the pic on my avatar, I am about as toned as you can get, but I trained low rep and heavy for that while dieting
And its also true you cannot shape a muscle, you can make it bigger, but your genetics will determine the shape

 

[from zero]

And its also true you cannot shape a muscle, you can make it bigger, but your genetics will determine the shape

Thank you needsize.

 

[chewyxrage]

For obliques, standing weighted side bends. Also good for forarms.

Yes. works them forearms reeeeel good, i agree.